I still haven?t yet heard from all of the dozens of Tea Party protests held across North Carolina today, but my preliminary count as of 9:30pm is that at least 15,000 North Carolinians participated ? including several thousand each in Raleigh and Charlotte, 1,500 in Greensboro, and around 1,000 each in Asheville, Winston-Salem, and several other cities. Even smaller communities such as Hillsborough, Goldsboro, Lincolnton, Kill Devil Hills, Newton, and Mooresville had crowds estimated in the several hundreds.
I’ll post a harder count in the morning, relying as much as possible on external counts by local police or the news media.
UPDATE: Just got reports in from Wilmington, New Bern, and Jacksonville. So up that statewide count to more than 16,500.
FINAL UPDATE: After scanning the Thursday morning press coverage and filling in the remaining blanks, it is safe to say that the statewide count exceeded 17,500.
